The Early Spread of Peaches (Prunus persica) across Spanish La Florida and their Importance for Modeling Archaeological Chronologies and Indigenous Networks

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Peaches were ubiquitous across eastern North America by the mid-seventeenth century, less than 100 years after the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, the earliest possible cultivation date for peaches in what is today the United States. As such, preserved or charred peach pits at archaeological sites, each with a built-in terminus post quem of c. 1565, have the potential to be used to substantively refine and resolve chronologies for early Indigenous-colonizer dynamics across the southeastern United States. This is particularly important because the nature of the radiocarbon calibration curve has historically thwarted attempts at high resolution contact-period chronologies that do not rely on materially based chronologies (e.g., the presence or absence of certain kinds of European materials). In this paper, we date peach pits via AMS from archaeological sites across Georgia to (1) demonstrate their utility in refining archaeological chronologies, (2) formally track their rapid spread, and (3) infer properties of Indigenous networks, including their general structures at the time of European colonization and the potential temporality of flows through these networks. The implications of this study thus extend to the potential network foundations of post-contact economic participation, sociopolitical transformations, and the spread of introduced diseases.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35992.0